


Fake It Until You Break It

by pastandfuturequeen



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Mild canon divergence, jesper centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 03:56:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17480711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastandfuturequeen/pseuds/pastandfuturequeen
Summary: Some people say that Jesper talks too much. That’s fine by him–while they’re too busy focusing on his mouth, they don’t even notice the movement of his hands until it’s too late. But some days even talking becomes just another chore, where empty words and meaningless jokes seem to pull just a little bit more out of him until he feels like nothing more than an empty revolver shell.Or, alternatively – another look at what’s going through Jesper’s mind before, during, and after the events of Six of Crows, with a bonus look at his time at university.





	Fake It Until You Break It

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece/inspired by [A story of Fire](https://kingkuwei.tumblr.com/post/182080683282/a-story-of-fire) by @kingkuwei. Can be read on own but I definitely recommend y'all check that out. 
> 
> [[Also Posted on Tumblr]](https://pastandfuturequeen.tumblr.com/post/182154648890/title-fake-it-until-you-break-it-author)

Jesper runs through the streets of the barrel, adrenaline lapping at his legs and his lungs straining for air. Their job went to shit. Honestly, he shouldn’t be all that surprised. That’s what happens more often than not in a place like Ketterdam, though it had happened only slightly less often since he joined up with the Dregs. Briefly, he wonders if he’s gone a little soft.

He turns the corner and in the next step turns his body around to fires once, catching his chaser once in the chest. One shot is all he needs. He has little time to celebrate before he has to twist around again, gravel crunching beneath his feet and a grin on his face as the man’s comrades come after him.

No, he’s definitely not soft.

It’s like a part of him is let loose whenever there’s a firefight involved. It’s like the humming beneath his skin can finally release, like an itch that’s being scratched with the butt end of a knife. It’s something, something, not enough–never enough. But for now, it’ll have to do.

Kaz berates him later. Jesper looks at him, and not for the first time the restlessness under his skin draws a thought to his mind: why does he put up with it? Why does he take orders from a boy who is–at most–only a handful of months older than him? Why does he lay his life in the hands of a boy who never gives him the courtesy of knowing the full situation? Why can’t he just leave? His hands go to his pearl handled revolvers, and they whisper their soft answer.

An image of his mom–fleeting now after so many years–he remembers the soft press of her hands on his face, the sounds of her voice, teaching him how to ride a horse, how to shoot. He remembers how she always smelled like jurda and coconut. The farm. His dad.

Jesper strokes the pearl handles of his pistols, and he wishes they had a different answer.

-

The sun flutters brightly past the windows of his bedroom, sliding across the wooden floor until it lands on his feet. Jesper wiggles his toes to catch some of the warmth, and for a moment he can imagine that he’s back home. It doesn’t help that he’s got the smell of coconut on his fingers, and if he closes his eyes he can pretend it’s a different pair of hands on his hair, doing the same familiar rhythm.

But it’s his arms that ache from their raised position, and the farm certainly didn’t have the sound of people haggling prices or the occasional drunken ballad flowing from the street below. Jesper opens his eyes, and he jumps when he sees Inej perched at his window, peering at him like a bird about to take flight. In his defense, nobody could ever anticipate a visit from the Wraith, and it’s not from a lack of trying.

Jesper offers her a smile, and it’s one she echoes. She can’t stay long, only having come to deliver a quick message before she’s off to carry out some secret task or other. Inej leaves, and Jesper is alone. The yelling grows louder, so loud that he can feel the ringing bouncing in his eardrums. He’s alone in a city full of people, and this is his home now. Jesper keeps twisting. 

-

They’re in the Ice Court, his life is in the gloved hands of Kaz Brekker, and then it all goes to shit. Everything always goes to shit.

Nina takes the drug, and all he can do is stare as a part of her seems to almost come to life. An armada falls to its knees, and not for the first time since he saw the work of jurda parem in action, a part of Jesper longs for it. For a single, fleeting moment he imagines himself rising above it all, finished with the hiding and the secrets and holding so much power in his hands that nobody could touch him.

Only they climb onto the boat, and then the spark goes out of Nina’s eyes, replaced by the hungry sheen of withdrawal. Jesper looks away and chases off the cursed thought. Nina’s the soldier, the perfect picture of a grisha who devoted her life to the cause once upon a time. Now she lays on the lap of the man who hunted her people, and the world that had quivered beneath her fingertips now seems to want to swallow her whole. Jesper looks at his hands and he no longer knows what to think. 

-

“You don’t talk much, do you?” Jesper asks, the words pulled from his lips without so much as a by-your-leave. He doesn’t know why he said it. It’s not like the boy can understand him. It’s silly, and as two beats stretch between them like a lifeline, Jesper thinks that he’s just wasting his time. But then the strange boy turns his head, and–that smile. That smile that causes him to be stand still, that for a single moment seems to calm the constant restlessness humming beneath his skin better than any heartrender ever could. And so he stays. “Jesper,” he says simply, pointing to himself. “Jesper Fahey.”

The boy’s golden eyes dance with something akin to amusement, and he takes a moment to peer into Jesper’s soul before he finally replies, “Kuwei Yul-Bo.”

-

The boat seems to be trapped into some kind of tempermental time warp. Days pass by all too quickly, the sunlight blinking only once before it’s gone. Night stretches itself around them like a cloak, the sea beneath their feet bleeding into the sky above their heads until Jesper can no longer tell where one begins and the other ends. Back in Ketterdam, this is the time where life become a card deck and lady death cashes in her winnings. Most nights, Jesper only hopes that his parlor tricks can offer enough entertainment to keep him in her favor. 

Fake it until you break it–isn’t that how the saying goes? At least that’s how the story goes. 

But here at sea, the only worries that plague his mind are the sounds of the waves crashing against the sides of the ship, and the soft sway of the boat at his feet. He stands on the deck with the railing at his back, he looks up at the stars, and he breathes. Sometimes the strange boy is there, staring off into the dark. Sometimes he’s not. Part of him likes it when he’s there, because it’s easier to talk when somebody’s there than when there isn’t.

Some people say that Jesper talks too much. That’s fine by him–while they’re too busy focusing on his mouth, they don’t even notice the movement of his hands until it’s too late. But some days even talking becomes just another chore, where empty words and meaningless jokes seem to pull just a little bit more out of him until he feels like nothing more than an empty revolver shell.

But here it doesn’t matter what he says. There’s no secret that needs to be hidden, no careful turn of phrase or checking and re-checking to see if someone could piece together a truth. No matter what Kaz might think, Jesper does keep control of his tongue–at least when it matters. When it _really_ matters. But here, the language barrier is enough of a safety block. So with that, he talks, and it feels like it’s the first time he’s spoken all day.

It’s about nothing at first. Just a steady stream of consciousness. Things that happened to him, scrapes he got out of, a random thing Inej told him about. And then he starts talking about things that he hasn’t talked about in years. Economics, and law, and the kind of analysis that’s been pulling at his brain and would make his former professors proud. Granted, the exact phrasing that slips past his lips every so often would certainly earn him some unamused looks if they were in an academic setting. He doesn’t know how he got to these topics, or why. But it feels good.

Kuwei hums and nods intermittently, just short noises thrown at random. Luck seems to favor him, for the sounds seem to hit the appropriate moments more often than not as the nights go by. Once, Jesper gets a laugh. It’s a rich sound, loud and genuine, accompanied by a grin wide enough to capture the sun.

Panic and suspicion shoots up Jesper’s spine and tenses his jaw into silence. Kuwei senses the tension in the air and sends him a puzzled look, his head cocked to the side and his brows knitting together. His lips part, and a soft string of unfamiliar words slide past, ending with something that Jesper thinks is a question. And then for a single, fleeting moment, the hope that had unknowingly snuck it’s way into Jesper’s heart came crashing into the ground, leaving nothing but brittle embarrassment in its wake. The existence of that hope scares him more than the initial panic did.

But then the moment passes, and Jesper can breathe once more.

-

They arrive at Ketterdam. Inej gets taken. Kaz decides that _he_ is the villain in this story, and Jesper wonders why that causes him to hurt as much as it does. He’s supposed to be better at this. At keeping someone close with a grin and a laugh, letting them think they’ve gotten at his core, but never really getting close. People don’t go looking for your secrets when they think they already know all of them.

-

He looks at Wylan. Wylan who doesn’t look like Wylan anymore, who borrows someone else’s face like a cheap costume to discard at the end of the day. He looks at Wylan, and he sees the million other boys just like him who he saw in the halls of university. Mercher’s sons and daughters who had a million tutors at their beck and call, their parent’s money paving away their ivory path and not realizing that they’ve paved themselves into blunt submission.

Conversations he had as a child with the other kids back on Novyi Zem are echoed again. Prettier words, but still the same clumsy fumbling and grasping at concepts beyond them. Only Jesper left the fumbling behind, when these boys had only barely begun. Jesper shuts his eyes and it’s like he’s back in the halls of university. 

The halls are cold with exposed brick that seems to pull the warmth from your bones. Mercher’s children walk the halls without a care in the world, walking with the purpose of men and women entirely confident in their own inflated perception of their own mediocrity. Jesper walks, and part of him is amused by it.

Jesper walks into his classroom and sits next to the wall. He smiles as Professor Na’va begins class, and her rich enthusiasm is the only thing that keeps him sane. “International exchange is a little like a date,” she says, pacing the room. “There’s something that the other person has that you like. But you don’t really know each other all that well, and you can’t just take and take with nothing in return. So you try to convince them that meeting with you is worth their while. Now–”

She stops in the middle of the room, looking up at the collected students with keen precision in her eyes. “Let’s say you’re one of three apple vendors, and you’re trying to trade for iron with the only iron supplier available. One of the other apple vendors promises to give the iron supplier access to apples grown in the region of Akukho Kukhula, and by extension, offering to expand the iron supplier’s market to include selling in the same region. The other apple vendor offers to sell the iron supplier apples at a fraction of the cost. How do you convince the iron supplier that they should trade with you?”

Professor Na’va surveys the room expectantly. A student raises their hand. “You try to convince the iron vender that you have the best quality of apples?” they suggest.

The professor shakes her head. “No. Even if you’re able to succeed at that, you’re still only making yourself equally as good as the other two, not better. Anybody else?”

“What about opening your own territory in the same place as the first vendor, _and_ selling them at a discounted price?”

Jesper screams internally.

“You can’t afford both of these things at once, you’ll go bankrupt and will have no apples to sell. Anybody else?” the professor asks again, surveying the class. 

“How about bribing the iron vendor?” someone calls out. 

A laugh bubbles out of Jesper’s chest before he can reign it in. 

Professor Na’va’s and the other student’s gazes turn to him, burning holes at the back of his head. Delicate mercher’s children don’t like being laughed at, after all. Jesper clears his throat and raises his hand as an after-the-fact peace offering.

“Yes, Mr. Fahey?” the professor asks. If Jesper looks closely, he can practically see the way her lips quirk upwards, and her brown eyes seem to cast him a half hearted warning.

Jesper grins. “You don’t do anything.”

Scoffs and bursts of laughter ripple throughout the class. The only one who isn’t laughing is Professor Na’va, who takes a step closer. A beam of light encircles her head from the windows at the top of the room, though that’s certainly not the only reason for the glowing look on her face. “And why would you do that, Mr. Fahey?”

“Well,” Jesper leans forward, looking at the rest of the class. “The first apple vendor isn’t going to sell apples from Akukho Kukhula, because Akukho Kukhula is flooded over half of the year. It’s great if you want to grow rice, but apples just won’t grow. Plus, the people who live in Akukho Kukhula already have a great system where they use wood for everything, not iron. The iron supplier will just end up with a bad trade.”

Some of the students grumble. “What about the other vendor?” one of them asks petulantly. Jesper turns to him. The boy’s pasty cheeks are the rounded evidence of his lavish upbringing, and the light brown hair atop his head is already thinning. Typical. 

“By selling the apples at half price, not only is the vendor cutting into labor costs and hurting the workers, but they’re also going to end up going broke before the contract is up since they can’t afford to keep up while working at that price,” Jesper explains. “By doing nothing, you’re saving time and effort, and you still end up with the iron supplier. It’s a win-win.”

Professor Na’va beams at him, her rich brown skin practically glowing. “That’s exactly right.” She turns to the rest of the class. “Always do your homework. Don’t be lazy and assume that just because something _looks_ like one thing, it can’t be another. That’s how you get conned. Now, like Jesper said–”

The lesson continues. Jesper grins, pride filling his chest. He knows he’s like a firecracker to these merchlings, too wild to be contained. Most of them probably had never even set foot in the places their parents talked about, yet nonetheless they tried to talk about policy. Hell, even some of the professors fell trap to it, though Jesper figures he can’t always blame them. They were merchlings too once, just with a fancier title.

Jesper loves policy, he loves economics, he loves the law. He just hates the people, with their boring stumbles into thoughts he already thought about back home, and the restlessness that seems to stay under his skin no matter where he goes.

Jesper leaves class and heads straight for the barrel. And just for a little bit, he can breathe. 

-

Wylan looks at him with borrowed eyes and a borrowed face, but the boy is still the same. He’s still the same merchling that he met in university. Wylan kisses him. Jesper closes his eyes.

-

Jesper is like a flame that’s constantly burning. Always, always burning. Part of him knows that at some point, his hands are going to get charred, and his lungs are going to fill with smoke, and he’s going to burn from the inside out.

Memories from his time at university haunt him. Half-formed thoughts and observations he’s been holding in over time, taunting him with the possibilities of what he could’ve been. What he became. What he will always be. A burnout. A man with a fire burning inside him, a burn that he thought was a blessing but turns out to be a curse, who is constantly in firefights and seeking something close to the burning that’s inside him just so that he can hide amongst the fire and feel something almost normal.

-

Kuwei is a lot more expressive than Jesper initially gave him credit for. Jesper talks, and Kuwei listens, and he’s back on the boat, with the sky and the sea wrapping him in her black arms and holding him close.

What they’re doing to him is wrong. What happened to him is wrong. But Jesper ruins anything he touches. So he doesn’t.

Instead, he tells Kuwei about how he grew up. He tells Kuwei about his dad’s farm, about how his mom taught him how to shoot, how to ride a horse. He tells Kuwei about the pride on his dad’s face when they learned he got accepted into university. He tells him about the stupid shit the other students used to say, the bold assumptions they’d make, the lukewarm commentary. Kuwei laughs again, only this time Jesper likes hearing the sound, likes the way that Kuwei looks at him through his thick black lashes, the smile that blooms on his face.

Maybe it’s a grisha thing, Jesper starts to wonder. And it’s the first time in a long time that he starts thinking of himself as being included as a grisha.

-

It’s night. The moon is out, softly dancing across the ground. A cloud passes and somehow it becomes almost darker.

Kuwei stands on the side of the room, pulling on a backpack Jesper had thought had gone missing a long time ago. Turns out that’s where it went. The realization of what’s happening doesn’t even come as a surprise to him, not with everything that had happened.

“You’re leaving.” Kuwei looks up, his golden eyes slightly startled at the sound of Jesper’s voice. It’s not a question. Kuwei sees that it’s him and his body relaxes, his jaw unclenching and his shoulders rising and falling in a shrug. Briefly, Jesper wonders when he started to learn how to look for the small signals in the other man’s actions. Immediately afterwards, he wonders if it really matters when.

“Not even going to say goodbye, huh?” Jesper laughs, and his chest is hollow. He shouldn’t be surprised. But he’s certainly sad to see him go. Confusion dances across Kuwei’s features, the same features that he’s seen again and again but they’re different, filled with a life so very different and distinct, one that Jesper could identify even in his sleep.

Kuwei parts his lips. “Who would I say goodbye to?” 

His lungs stop. For a long moment, Jesper can only stare at Kuwei, and all of his previous interactions pile up again and again in his mind–all of the looks, and the smiles, and the laughs at just the right moment–Jesper wants to scream at himself. “Of course you could speak Kerch,” he says, shaking his head in amazement. 

He remembers the time where he pointed at an apple, saying the word carefully as he told him the story about the apple vendor hypothetical. Kuwei had looked at him with amusement before he pointed at it and said, “Píng guǒ.” Jesper had repeated the word back at him, and there was a light behind Kuwei’s eyes that Jesper really didn’t how to identify at that time. Only now it all makes sense.

Another thought strikes him.

“And here I was bothering Nina for lessons so I could actually hold a conversation with you,” Jesper says, only he’s grinning in disbelief. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to learn another language, regardless.

Kuwei looks at him, and it’s like a weight is being taken off his shoulders. His lips part again. “I’m going to Ravka,” he says.

And, well–Jesper doesn’t like Ravka. The fact that they colonized his country doesn’t help, but he knows that there, grisha are safe. It’s a lot to unpack, but that’s a conversation for another time. Right now, he knows he’s happy for Kuwei. And so–Jesper stretches his arms out.

When Kuwei’s brows knit together in confusion, and Jesper is reminded of a lost duck he saw at one point waddling around the docks. Jesper huffs a laugh and wiggles his eyebrows. “You need to give me a hug before you go,” he says, shaking his arms for emphasis.

Kuwei laughs, and it’s the same familiar sound Jesper’s heard throughout the short time they’ve been together. Another part of him relaxes. It’s all the same. And as he wraps Kuwei in his arms, he lets out a breath. Kuwei nuzzles his head into Jesper’s shoulder, and his arms slide up and fit perfectly against his back, so close that he can hear Kuwei’s heartbeat, and Jesper realizes that he doesn’t remember the last time someone hugged him like this.

Then Kuwei sways–or maybe it was Jesper? Does it matter?–they sway, and Jesper can practically sense the smile on the other boy’s face. Then for reasons unknown to him, Jesper laughs. And Kuwei does too. And it’s all Jesper can do to finally let him go.

Kuwei pulls away, his hands lingering on the small of Jesper’s back. His golden eyes search Jesper’s for something, something that he doesn’t even dare think. He asks, softly, “Do you want to come with me?”

Temptation tugs at him. For a single moment, Jesper wonders. He doesn’t like Ravka, never would like Ravka, but–

A kind smile, and oil-slick fingers in his hair. The warm suns kisses his face, and his grin stretches from ear to ear. His mother tells him a joke and he throws his head back and laughs.

The university, with it’s cold brick walls and the lines of mercher’s children staring at him. Professor Na’va beams at him, sees the potential in him. He twists and trips and falls. He jokes and he laughs even when nobody is laughing with him. 

The barrel, with dark turns on every corner, and a deck of cards in one hand with the barrel of a gun in the other. Kaz seeks retribution against the world. Jesper smiles and he laughs and he laughs and he laughs. He laughs until there’s blood in his lungs. He laughs until that’s all he can do.

Kuwei looks at him. And Jesper knows that he can’t go. Not yet. 

Kuwei turns away, something close to disappointment hidden behind those clever eyes. Jesper stares after him as Kuwei nods and with a final wave, slips away into the night. Jesper tugs at the hair atop his head. He turns back towards the door, memories haunting at his heels and newfound conviction in his eyes. They’ll meet again, he decides as he heads towards the door.

But first, he has work to do.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first venture into this fandom, though I'm sure there'll be more. As always, thank y'all for reading, and feel free to leave kudos, comments, and criticism below!


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